U2 Nominated for the Irish Meteor Awards

The event will be presented by Irish TV personality Amanda Byram and will take place at RDS, Dublin, on Friday 19 February. That will be the celebration of the 10º anniversary of these awards and Snow Patrol, Westlife, The Script, Florence and the Machine, Paulo Nutini, The Coronas and Pixie Lott will perform.

The nominations for U2 are:

-Best Irish Band: Bell X1, The Coronas, Delorentos, Snow Patrol, U2.

- Best Irish Album: Blue Lights On The Runway - Bell X1, Tony Was An Ex-Con - The Coronas, The Duckworth Lewis Method - The Duckworth Lewis Method, Up To Now - Snow Patrol, No Line On The Horizon - U2

- Best Irish Live Performance: Bell X1, Christy Moore, The Script, Snow Patrol, U2

source: www.meteormusicawards.meteor.ie//www.rte.ie

"It Might Get Loud" for Charity

Hot Press posted the following piece of news:

U2's Edge will introduce a special preview charity screening of Davis Guggenheim's film It Might Get Loud, on Thursday 7th January. All proceeds go to Our Lady's Children's Hospital, Crumlin.

The electric guitar isn’t so much an instrument, more of a calling in this affectionate triple-portrait of rock royalty: Led Zeppelin’s legendary Jimmy Page, U2’s very own sculptor in sound The Edge, and fiercely modern traditionalist Jack White of The White Stripes.

The IFI also unveiled its brand new luxury cinema screen and upgraded public areas and launches its new programme for the coming year. Sarah Glennie, IFI Director said “We are thrilled to announce the completion of our major 2009 redevelopment. Cinema 3 in particular has allowed us to broaden the range and depth of our programme. I’m delighted to be able to announce a full and varied programme for 2010 incorporating festivals, seasons, new collaborations, programming strands and a range of special events.”

These new initiatives for 2010 will run alongside the IFI’s already full and diverse programme of new releases from Ireland and around the world, established monthly strands from the Archive, Ireland on Sunday and IFI Stranger Than Fiction Presents..., as well as extensive IFI Irish Film Archive and IFI Education national activities.

source:www.hotpress.com/

Bono´s Controversial Words

A few days ago, Bono wrote his usual column for the New York Times. While most of the subjects he wrote about have been highly praised and taken into account, there was one that was obviously not left behind (pardon my pun!). Of course I´m talking about the one where he writes about the rights of intellectual property, downloading and the rest: Intellectual Property Developers. he called it.
Many voices raised in favour and against the issue. For example, Kris Novoselic (Nirvana´s bassit and activist for Joint Artists and Music Promotions Political Actions Committee) wrote an article called : Why I Agree with Bono for the Seattle Weekly while Walter Naeslund (who calls himself Advertising Agency Entrepreneur, Professional Speaker, and Hopeless Optimist) in his blog wrote a self implicit article Why Bono is an Idiot (This Time) which has a highly repercusion in the Net especially in Twitter . Today Naeslund wrote another article Why Bono is not REALLY an Idiot, But Would Perhaps Need To Think a Little Harder . The controversy that follows confirms, in a way, the power of these Internet tools and makes us think of Bono´s words on creativity and property rights.

Disclaimer: This image has been edited using special effects.

source:blogs.seattleweekly.com//http://walternaeslund.com/

Edge Talks to Neil

Neil Mc Cormick has posted an interview with Edge in his Culture blog in The Telegraph.

The documentary feature film ‘It Might Get Loud’ opens in the UK this Friday, January 8th , about a meeting between three iconic guitarists of different rock generations: the legendary Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin, garage blues primitivist Jack White of The White Stripes and U2’s professorial effects master The Edge. My interview with Jimmy Page ran in the Telegraph last week but while researching it I spoke to The Edge, who called from LA just before Christmas. Here, for U2 and guitar fans, is that conversation in full, in which Edge discusses the past and future of the guitar, U2’s new album, why they might play new songs at Glastonbury, the fate of Spiderman and the Edge’s previously unremarked resemblance to a Hollywood sex symbol.

It´s not often that you might find yourself on stage with some of the greatest guitarists in the world, so what did you learn from the experience?

What did I learn? Even though all guitar players are reaching for the ideal guitar tone, I was struck by how different they sounded, and in the hands of other people with different set of ears to put a sound together, its such a different result, and it just showed me how the instrument is so versatile. A trumpet sounds pretty much like a trumpet, and that’s true of a lot instruments, pianos sound like pianos, but there’s something about the guitar, the range of possibilities is much broader. And I really felt our differences influences and points of view were really contained within our sound and choice of sound and ways of playing.

Indeed, the way the different personalities express themselves through their instrument is something that comes across very clearly in the film. Yet while the individual journeys that bring you to that shared stage are fascinating, when you do all get together, there’s no great musical explosion, just a lot of tentative twiddling, really.

That was the other thing I learned: how useful drummers and bass players and singers are! Put three guitarist together in a room and what you get is lots of guitars. Also I was thinking about what would I play out of my stuff for these guys, and I realised what I do isn’t really designed to be heard solo. Its not like I sit down and write a guitar piece and that becomes a song. I actually rely on what Adam and Larry are doing to complete the picture. The Streets Have No Name doesn’t make any sense out of context, it just becomes this very Philip Glass like set of motifs, and the meaning is really in the changes in the bass and drums. So that was actually a nice realisation, I’m one of those guitar players who’s really integrated into his band. I’m not like Jimmy or Jack, who can play solo guitar that would stand up on its own.

Do you often play with other guitarists?

No, I try and avoid it at all costs. Jamming is really the most awful, excruciating experience for me, I really don’t enjoy it. First of all, that’s not how I work as a guitar player. I compose using the instrument, I don’t really sit down and play for the sake of playing stuff. So the idea of jamming – endless, directionless noodling around some nondescript chord progression – I really find very boring. Obviously a great song is fun to play, but U2 were never really in that phase of The Beatles in Hamburg or Van Morrison in showbands or Dylan in the folk clubs, of knowing and learning a big collection of classics. We never did that, and at the time we were forming as a band there really wasn’t a large collection of songs that we felt like learning. It was actually a moment where the past was being thrown out the window, so its very much part of our DNA as a band not to be too reverential, as a general rule, and to try and look forward all the time. Invention being what we value most highly as opposed to emulation – which is what a lot of musicians feel is important, being able to play like the greats.

So what did meeting Jimmy Page mean to you, because at the time of U2’s origins, at the beginning of punk, Led Zeppelin and the so called dinosaur rock bands were almost seen as the enemy, something to be rebelled against.

Before meeting Jimmy, I listened back to some Zeppelin stuff and realise it has stood the test of time. It has the hallmark of timeless music, it hasn’t dated, while so much from that era really did date and in fact has completely vanished. It was really dynamic, the visceral power of it was pretty thrilling still, and it brought me back to when I was 14 or 15. That was a nice realisation. And also meeting the man and realising we had so much in common, and actually we are kind of brothers in arms rather than antagonists in terms of musical philosophy.

So what did you find that you had in common?

I think what has come through, after all the dust has settled on the music of that era, is that everybody assumed that what was important was improvising and having a dexterity with the instrument, so that Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck, the gunslingers of the time, were highly revered, but it turns out it was actually always about composition, always about idea and themes and stuff that you actually had to write. And that where I think Jimmy Page scored, is that his guitar playing was a lot more composed than any of the others of that era and much better for that. And although it’s probably uncool to admit it – and I don’t know if he would ever admit it – but even his solos were really well composed and thought out. I don’t think he was just a guy who would sit down and play the first thing that came into his head, like a Gary Moore, Jeff Beck or Eric. I think he really had the chance to figure things out. It’s the discipline of the work. Its really sharp, really hard, not fuzzy. That was one of the realisations for me.

If you were to listen to a collection of the best selling singles of the last year, the guitar is almost noticeable by its absence. When it comes to pop music, its all about synths and electronically treated sound, so even where there is a guitar, its not necessarily recognisable, or the featured instrument. What do you think is the future of the guitar?

I don’t think it’s in jeopardy. It seems pretty bright. There’s always somebody on the horizon who seems to be really able to make the instrument their own, and find ways to use it that haven’t been heard before. The biggest band in America right now, in terms of profile and records is The Kings Of Leon, and before them it was The Killers, so there seems to be still a huge interest in guitar music. I’m looking forward to the next Arcade Fire album, and I think Nick Zinner from Yeah Yeah Yeahs is a guitar player who’s really done some interesting things. Ok, the electronica movement seems to be very much in vogue at the moment, probably MGMT kick started that, then you’ve got Justice and the Bloody Beetroots and all that hard dance stuff, but the guitar is managing to hold on, its one of the essential ingredients in contemporary music, like drums. Them Crooked Vultures is also quite cool. I’m not sure it’s on the level of classic but it’s a very interesting guitar record.

It’s been a strange year for U2. You had the biggest tour in the world and sold about four million of your album No Line On The Horizon, but it never really caught fire the way other U2 albums have. Indeed, its perceived as a flop.

Yeah, there is that smell in the air. We allowed ourselves to think about having a big hit record when in fact it’s a very interesting record but it’s quite a dark record, it’s not really radio friendly. Even ‘Get On Your Boots’, which is high octane, its not a slam dunk of a hit song. I think everyone just got caught up in the plan as opposed to sitting back and thinking about the record we’d made. But I feel OK about it. Often U2 are accused of being more successful than we deserve, in this case I think this record is less successful than it deserved. I think its got some of the best songs we’ve ever written. ‘Moments Of Surrender’ is right up there, and ‘Unknown Caller’.

What about the new album, the long rumoured ‘Songs Of Ascent’, which is supposed to be based around more low key material from the Horizon sessions.

Well that’s what I’m working on this week, actually. I’m songwriting. In fact, I wrote something this morning just before getting on the phone with you, it sounds great. So on that level we’re pushing forward, we’re not taking it easy, but we won’t really know til the new year what we’ll be able to achieve. There’s a certain sort of practical window of opportunity to release the record that we are operating within. If the material isn’t ready for the early new year we’ll probably have to put it on hold. But I’m looking forward to the idea of playing some of the songs live before they’re released. That would be my consolation prize if we don’t get the album done. We’ve never done it, we’ve always talked to all of our producers about the idea, but I think it would give the tour a little frisson which I think it needs. If you have two or three new songs no one’s heard before thrown in from time to time, I think that would be very exciting, for us as well, to try them and see how they get on.

So we can expect to hear new U2 songs at Glastonbury.

Glastonbury is going to be fun. I’ve never been.

I think Adam is the only member of U2 whose been to Glastonbury. He went with the Waterboys in the Eighties

We’re busy men! We’re often actually doing U2 tours when Glastonbury is on, or working on a project, so its not so strange that we’ve not been. But what is interesting is the way people talk about it, its got this semi-religious aspect. Bono and I were talking about our last record, one of the sub plots is pilgrimage, and in some ways that’s exactly what Glastonbury is. So we’re going to make our pilgrimage.

And what about Spiderman, the musical you have been working on with Bono, which seems to have run into a few funding problems?

It’s in this hiatus and were just waiting for word on the fundraising to get the production back on track. All the songs are pretty much written, we’ve got a bunch of lyrics to finish off, but all the music is pretty much there, and its all sounding really convincing. It’s a great script, great director, great choreographer. It will happen.

So 2010 is shaping up to be another busy year for U2

And they’re shooting the film of your book (Killing Bono). That’s great news. I was talking to the director about who should play me, and I think we agreed on Brad Pitt.

by Neil Mc Cormick

source:http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk

Simon Xmas Busk Dublin feat Bono, Glen Hansard, Damien Rice, Mundy and more

First professional video of the Christmas Busking at Graffon Street Dublin.




Bono: saved by Rice and the audience when he didn´t remember the words of "One"?? That´s what happens when a great song becomes part of the collective conscious.

Bono: Is it Once or One? LOL!!

An Unforgettable Christmas for many people who were there ,hopefully they´ve made a lot of money too!!!

source:www.youtube.com

Ten for the Next Ten

Bono´s first column of 2010 as Op-Ed Guest Columnist in The New York Times.

"IF we have overindulged in anything these past several days, it is neither holiday ham nor American football; it is Top 10 lists. We have been stuffed full of them. Even in these self-restrained pages, it has been impossible to avoid the end-of-the-decade accountings of the 10 best such-and-suches and the 10 worst fill-in-the-blanks.

And so, in the spirit of rock star excess, I offer yet another.

The main difference, if it matters, is that this list looks forward, not backward. So here, then, are 10 ideas that might make the next 10 years more interesting, healthy or civil. Some are trivial, some fundamental. They have little in common with one another except that I am seized by each, and moved by its potential to change our world.

Return of the Automobile as a Sexual Object

How is it that the country that made us all fall in love with the automobile has failed, with only a few exceptions, to produce a single family sedan with the style and humor and grace of the cars produced in the ’40s’50s and ’60s? ...

Intellectual Property Developers


Caution! The only thing protecting the movie and TV industries from the fate that has befallen music and indeed the newspaper business is the size of the files. The immutable laws of bandwidth tell us we’re just a few years away from being able to download an entire season of “24” in 24 seconds. Many will expect to get it free. ..

An Equal Right to Pollute (and the Polluter-Pays Principle)

In the recent climate talks in Copenhagen, it was no surprise that developing countries objected to taking their feet off the pedal of their own carbon-paced growth; after all, they played little part in building the congested eight-lane highway of a problem that the world faces now...

A Person (Dr. William Li) and a Word (Angiogenesis)

Angiogenesis is the process by which new blood vessels grow. This is good — except when it’s very bad, as in the case of cancerous tumors. Blood vessels are their supply lines. Dr. William Li of the Angiogenesis Foundation has called research in this realm the “first medical revolution of the 21st century"and he should know. (I shouldn’t, given my lack of a medical pedigree, but I learned about it the from my bandmate the Edge, who supports Dr. Li’s foundation.)...

Matter Doesn’t Matter


God, it appears, is a Trekkie. (God help us.)

Dr. Anton Zeilinger, an Austrian physicist, is becoming a rock star of science for his work in quantum teleportation, which I know very little about but which I think I may have achieved backstage one night in Berlin in the early 1990s. At any rate, it seems to have something to do with teleporting properties or bits of information, not physical objects; even though Dr. Zeilinger plays down the possibility of a “Star Trek” moment, his breakthroughs are catching the attention of the nonscientific world for their metaphysical implications. His own version of E=mc2 ends in a cosmic punch line: that when it comes to the origin of the universe, information matters more than matter.

Could it be that God is a nerd?


Festival of Abraham


Here’s something that could never have happened in the Naughts but will maybe be possible in the Tweens or Teens — if there’s a breakthrough in the Mideast peace process. The idea is an arts festival that celebrates the origin of the three Abrahamic religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Every year it could be held in a different location; Jerusalem would obviously be the best place to start.

In Ireland, at the height of the “Troubles,” it was said that the only solution for rabid sectarianism was to let 1,000 punk-rock bands bloom: music helped create a free space for dialogue (of a high-volume variety). So no politicians allowed. Artists only.

People Power and the Upside-Down Pyramid

A lot of us have seen or lived the organizational chart of the last century, in which power and influence (whether possessed by church, state or corporation) are concentrated in the uppermost point of the pyramid and pressure is exerted downward. But in this new century, and especially in some parts of the developing world, the pyramid is being inverted. Much has been written about the profits to be made at the bottom of the pyramid; less has been said about the political power there. Increasingly, the masses are sitting at the top, and their weight, via cellphones, the Web and the civil society and democracy these technologies can promote, is being felt by those who have traditionally held power. Today, the weight bears down harder when the few are corrupt or fail to deliver on the promises that earned them authority in the first place...

Taking the Fight to Rotavirus

The thing is, they exist, these vaccines. They’re not a mere hope, like an AIDS vaccine. And one of the brightest bits of news in 2009 is that rotavirus vaccines have been shown to work not only in nations with low child mortality, but in the poorest countries, where diarrhea (not a killer in our house) caused by rotavirus infections takes the lives of 500,000 children a year. The World Health Organization just this summer issued a strong recommendation that rotavirus vaccinations be part of every nation’s immunization program. From this vantage point, I like the look of the next decade.

Viva la (Nonviolent) Revolución

“As someone who stands here as a direct consequence of Dr. King’s life work,” President Obama said in his Nobel acceptance speech, “I am living testimony to the moral force of nonviolence.”...

The start of the decade ought to be a time for a little bit of hope — not the wispy stuff, but battle-hardened hope, forged in the grim, purposeful spirit of the times. So I’ll place my hopes on the possibility — however remote at the moment — that the regimes in North Korea, Myanmar and elsewhere are taking note of the trouble an aroused citizenry can give to tyrants, and that people in places filled with rage and despair, places like the Palestinian territories, will in the days ahead find among them their Gandhi, their King, their Aung San Suu Kyi.

The World Cup Kicks Off the African Decade

It’s getting easier to describe to Americans the impact of the World Cup — especially the impact it will have in Africa, where the tournament is to be held this summer. A few years ago, Ivory Coast was splitting apart and in the midst of civil war when its national team qualified for the 2006 jamboree. The response was so ecstatic that the war was largely put on hold as something more important than deathly combat took place, i.e. a soccer match. The team became a symbol of how the different tribes could — and did — get on after the tournament was over.

This time round, for the 2010 World Cup, naysayers thought South Africa could not build the stadiums in time. Those critics should be red-faced now. South Africa’s impressive preparations underline the changes on the continent, where over the last few years, 5 percent economic growth was the average. Signs point to a further decade of growth to come. Canny investors will put more capital there. This in turn has the potential to shore up fragile young democracies across the continent.

It would be fitting if Nelson Mandela, who has done more than anyone for Africa’s rising, would kick off the opening ceremonies. If he shows up, the world will weep with joy..."

To read the complete column, click here.

source:www.nytimes.com

The Edge on guitarists, Glasbonbury and musicals

Times On Line has published an interview to David Evans, a.k.a. The Edge.

The name on his passport says Dave Evans but the rest of the world knows him as The Edge, the moniker handed to him by a young Bono Vox in U2’s early days in Seventies Dublin. Polite and self-effacing, the guitarist is a self-confessed “music obsessive” who finishes our interview asking what new bands he should catch up on. His status presents many opportunities, not least the chance to work and play with his musical heroes. At the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame 25th anniversary concert in October he accompanied Bruce Springsteen, Mick Jagger, Black Eyed Peas and Patti Smith. “That was amazing,” he recalls. “You don’t get many opportunities to play with artists of that calibre in your life.” Actually, he gets more than most, as evidenced by his starring role alongside Jimmy Page and Jack White in the big-screen rockumentary It Might Get Loud. A guitar fan’s wet dream, it traces the threesome’s differing approaches to their art before bringing them together to jam.“What came out of the movie,” he says, “was that it doesn’t matter what your influences are, it’s whether you are an originator. It’s about attempting to express the sound in your head you can’t otherwise explain.”

...guitarists

Jimmy Page An utter gentleman. I found him as I hoped, great company. He came from the blues whereas we started U2 as a reaction against all of that.

Jack White (of the White Stripes) It’s early days for Jack in a sense but you can already hear the multitude of Jack Whites out there. That’s an indicator to his influence.

Keith Richards You know when something still sounds as luminous and bright as it did the day it was coined? The riff to Satisfaction is like that. It crystallised a moment in time but it has a power that is undeniable.

Tom Verlaine & Richard Lloyd (of Television) Television were a huge influence at the time. The composition of Marquee Moon changed my way of thinking about the guitar. It made me challenge myself. It wasn’t so much “I want to sound like them” but “What can I do?”

Nick Zinner (of Yeah Yeah Yeahs) He has a really potent but minimal style. That was something we took from the nihilism of the punk era, maximum effect from minimal input, something I try to retain.

...Glastonbury

By the time Glastonbury hit its stride we were doing our own thing. It didn’t seem right for us then. It feels like we really have to do it because if we don’t do it now, we never will. I’m obviously familiar with the festival’s ideal but I’ve never experienced it. I used to be sceptical of its roots, the hippy thing. I’m going along to check it out as much as anything but I have a good feeling about it. I’d like to hope we can make our mark.

...musicals

Spider-Man I’ve been working on this with Bono for a while and it’s probably going to happen in the spring. It’s not a straight rock musical, there’s other stuff going on. Opera would be the closest reference. Writing character-led songs was a really fresh challenge and we’re very excited about it. There’s some fantastic music in there.

West Side Story I’m a fan of the great musicals but there’s plenty of poor ones because they can be as ripe with clichés as any rock’n’roll. West Side Story however is undeniably brilliant and highly original.

Oliver! As a kid, one of the first records I got as a Christmas gift was Oliver!, which had some marvellous tunes. I met Lionel Bart later on and he turned out to be a sweet man.

Tommy The original rock opera. A really original story matched with some huge songs. It set a new benchmark at the time.

Cabaret I’ve seen it performed on stage and as a movie, and it’s wonderful. I love the dark Weimar thing.

...the 360 degree tour

Working with 'The Claw’ [the tour’s futuristic stage set] has been a challenge, but after a while we started to get into it. The fact there are four of us means we can spread out across the stage and come back together. It reinforces the band thing. It was almost a conscious decision to get into a huddle and play for each other as much as for the audience.

...Bono

In my opinion he’s the best frontman of any band, a great performer and lyricist. I’ve never doubted I had the best singer of his generation in the band. His politics is very much an extension of the band ethos. We’ve always supported the things we believe in. He took it to a new level by getting inside those things. I think there’s a compromise there that I personally don’t want to be involved in. I don’t want to be in the meetings. In my opinion, the artist has a duty to maintain an idealistic view of the world. Bono is one of those people who can see it from all angles without compromising himself as an artist. I’m amazed by that.

Interview by Mike Pattenden

From Times Online , January 2, 2010

www.timesonline.com